I thought the LGBT aspect of the story was beautifully and subtly done. Following Ash’s journey, and the two options she had to choose between, created a dynamic that kept me reading. I was pulled into the story because of the writing and the main character from the beginning, as I compared it to what I expected of a retelling. The story just flows with gorgeous detail and a real struggle between two worlds for Ash. I enjoy reading retellings of Cinderella stories, the classic little-girl fantasy, and this one took it in a completely different direction. This book has lyrical writing creating a fantasy world retelling of the Cinderella story. I had heard this title quite a bit and was looking forward to reading it once I got it. But Sidhean has already claimed Ash for his own, and she must make a choice between fairy tale dreams and true love.Įntrancing, empowering, and romantic, Ash is about the connection between life and love, and solitude and death, where transformation can come from even the deepest grief. Though their friendship is as delicate as a new bloom, it reawakens Ash’s capacity for love-and her desire to live. Instead of chasing fairies, Ash learns to hunt with Kaisa. The day that Ash meets Kaisa, the King’s Huntress, her heart begins to change. When she meets the dark and dangerous fairy Sidhean, she believes that her wish may be granted.

In her dreams, someday the fairies will steal her away, as they are said to do. Consumed with grief, her only joy comes by the light of the dying hearth fire, rereading the fairy tales her mother once told her. In the wake of her father’s death, Ash is left at the mercy of her cruel stepmother. From the deepest grief comes the chance for transformation.How I Got It: Free Hardcover at ALAN Workshop But most important of all, she also meets Kaisa, a huntress employed by the king, and it is Kaisa who truly awakens Ash's desires for both love and self-respect.Ash escapes a life with her grim and self-serving stepmother and finds her beloved one.ASH is a fairy tale about possibility and recognizing the opportunities for change. Against the sheer misery of her stepmother's cruelty, greed and ambition in preparing her two charmless daughters for presentation at court, and hopefully Royal or aristocratic marriage, Ash befriends one of these fairies-a mysterious, handsome man-who grants her wishes and restores hope to Ash's existence, even though she knows there will be a price to pay. As orphaned Ash grows up, a servant in her stepmother's home, she begans to realise that her beloved mother, Elinor was very much in tune with these underworld folk, and that she herself has the power to see them too. In the world of ASH, fairies are an older race of people who walk the line between life and death, reality and magic.

Read ash by malinda lo